NFL TV Ratings Still Should Be Cause For Concern At League Office

Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League (NFL), speaks during the New York Times DealBook conference in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016. The event brings together CEOs, leading figures in finance, and experts from diverse industries to assess the challenges and opportunities that will define the deal world of tomorrow. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

After a rocky start to the season, NFL TV ratings appeared to improve as the season moved past the November elections.

Yet, NBC's Sunday night games were down 10% year on year. And ESPN's Monday Night games were down 12% year on year.

Overall, the TV ratings appeared off 8% in aggregate.

That's a big improvement compared to how the season's TV ratings began in September and October.

Back then, many theories were floated including one that fans were turned off by the kneeling protests of players during the national anthem. This led to a great deal of consternation and study in the NFL's League office in New York. Ideas were apparently hatched of how to improve viewership such as reducing the ad load during the game or speeding the game up.

As we sit here today, John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal probably speaks with what is the conventional wisdom on what happened to the TV ratings in 2016: the election. This theory is that so much attention of viewers was sucked up by the cable TV news networks in the lead up to the election that these viewers - by definition - couldn't watch the prime-time games. Primetime ratings for CNN and Fox News appear to corroborate that.

However, in the lead-up to this Sunday's Super Bowl, the League Office shouldn't feel like the problem has passed.

Most cable news viewers are old - over 55. Even if this year was a blip for the election, the NFL needs more under 49 viewers. Where were they?

Millennial viewers are still distracted. The world of options for anyone under 50 on how to spend their time entertaining themselves keeps getting splintered more as time passes. Maybe it's Snapchat this year. Next year, it will be some other new app or streaming service. The world of choices is getting bigger, not smaller.

If the run-up to the election was drawing attention, it appears that (based on the last couple of weeks) the next four years will have lots of distractions drawing older folks to the cable news they've started to get used to watching more.

The NFL should be scared. And they should be looking at all options.

But, if the core problem is that viewers are just gradually migrating away to watching other stuff on their phones than sports, a reduced ad load or faster game won't fix that problem.